The group's latest quarterly results, published this week, showed a more pronounced slowdown than expected in sales growth, disappointing Wall Street.

The two largest shareholders of Alibaba are still Japan's SoftBank (31.75 per cent at the end of 2014) and Yahoo (15.27 per cent).

Founded by Jack Ma in 1999, Alibaba is China's biggest e-commerce company but is seeking to expand beyond its traditional business.

The Chinese company and Amazon are considered competitors in some areas, but unlike the US firm which makes its own e-book reader, Alibaba has no products of its own and simply provides a trading platform.